Acer’s Aspire E11 and V11 fanless laptops now available for $250 and up

Acer’s new inexpensive notebooks with 11.6 inch displays, Bay Trail processors and fanless designs are now available in the United States.

The Acer Aspire E11 is a small notebook which sells for as little as $250, while the Aspire V11 has a touchscreen display and a starting price of $350 (it’s worth noting that this model also has more memory and storage space than the cheapest non-touch model).

I’m actually writing this article on an Aspire V11 that Acer loaned me to review. I probably won’t have a full review ready for another week or two, but I can say that the notebook is thin, light, offers decent performance for basic tasks, and should get reasonably good battery life.

Here are a few configurations I’ve found that are already on sale in the US:

There are a few things to keep in mind about these little laptops. First, while they have no noisy fans, they do have hard drives instead of solid state storage — and thanks to the moving parts in the hard drives the notebooks aren’t entirely silent.

Second, while these notebooks have some of the most powerful Intel Bay Trail chips available, even the most powerful of the bunch is a 7.5W processor which isn’t going to offer the same kind of performance you would expect from a 15W or Haswell processor. The good news is that Bay Trail chips are generally much cheaper, which is why these systems are so affordable.

I’m testing one of the $369 models right now, and it looks like Acer’s estimate of 7 hours of battery life seems reasonable. At the same time I haven’t had any problems surfing the web with over a dozen browser tabs open or streaming internet video… and that’s about all I’ve had time to test so far.

Stay tuned for more details.

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Please when you do a review, open it up so that we can see if the hdd(to ssd), memory and battery are upgreadable/replaceable.

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4 years ago

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jb82

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seconded

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4 years ago

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kjb

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Seems like a lot of work just to upgrade the RAM

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4 years ago

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jb82

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As its baytrail I don’t think it can have more than 4gb anyway right?

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4 years ago

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Jeorge

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No. The official datasheet indicates that you can upgrade to 8gb of ram.

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4 years ago

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CyberGusa

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The Bay Trail T is limited to 4GB but unless the system maker limits it then Bay Trail M/D (Celeron/Pentium) can support up to 8GB…

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4 years ago

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Joe

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Do you know if there are any differences between these models and The TravelMate B115-models? Both specs and looks are really similar.

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4 years ago

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tikl

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I’d like to see side by side comparisons of the E11 and B115P in a single article too.

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4 years ago

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broci

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Whats the difference between performance & power consumption between the celeron/pentium in these? Its hard to tell by the pricing which is the better device.

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4 years ago

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mo

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How do these compare to the Acer B115P? The B115P seems like it has smaller bezels so a possibly smaller footprint. Do both just have Bay Trail options (ie. no Haswell)? Is it easy to swap the HDD and RAM for both models?

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4 years ago

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mo

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Oh ya, pleas test Linux support too. Thanks!

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4 years ago

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mo

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Particularly, the WiFi chip especially if it’s a Realtek or Ralink chip. Those Realtek and Ralink chips often have problems on both Windows and Linux.

Please test for thermal throttling too. I’ve had heat issues with past Acer 11.6 inchers. So it’s possible Acer might not have a good thermal design around the low power Bay Trail chip.

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4 years ago

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pat

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Please test SD card speed both under Windows and Linux. I have a Ricoh
SDHC/XC card reader in my notebook and it’s a lot slower uner Linux than under Windows.
For SDXC cards I can get get 80-90 MB/s under Windows but under 20 MB/s
under Linux (sdhci-pci driver).

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4 years ago

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Charlie Strive

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Does this have a user-replaceable battery?

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4 years ago

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ddevine

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It looks to be somewhat replaceable as it connected by a simple connector after you remove the bottom cover (a few screws) – but obviously finding replacement parts for consumer grade gear is hard a year or more down the road.
It looks like you can replace the HDD and RAM too…
If this thing is durable enough (I don’t trust Acer crap generally) this may be a really attractive option.

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4 years ago

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me

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Please tell what are the hdd temperatures when cpu is idle and full load.

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4 years ago

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Tim

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Brad, would you do the readers a favor by listing the main differences between the E11 and V11 series? And if you want to go further, the diff in specs of the three listed Atom SoCs? Granted, the reader can go and Google for the specs himself, but hopefully you can minimize that burden.

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4 years ago

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Michael Thompson

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Interesting!

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4 years ago

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Alex Chang

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Are these laptops equipped with glossy or matte screens?

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4 years ago

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mo

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